Echo’s eyes gleamed as he stared up at the sign above the rustic, wooden double doors. It had taken a year’s worth of saving, a part time job on the side, and selling a few things, but Echo was extremely proud that he had finally done it. Echo had gotten together enough money for membership to the hottest gym in the city, the Jungle. Echo looked around the bust city block and watched the various people rush by without a passing glance at the building, and he wondered how they could do it. This was the Jungle! The majority of athletes that made the history books had gotten their start here, cutting their teeth on the old-fashioned training The Jungle was renown the world over for. Anyone who truly had their heart set on a career of a perfect body came to this temple of a gym and payed the homage of their blood, sweat, and tears. That is why Echo had come to worship. Too often his peers that grew their bodies to incredible sizes for competitive judgment scoffed at him. Bronzed up like edifices on the stage, they would jeer at Echo’s uncoated skin, saying that only a rookie would come onto the stage with such a flabby physique. They mocked him further in noticing that, unlike them, he never bothered to coat his fur in any tone to accentuate what he did have. Echo ignored them though, even as he lost. He was proud of what he already had, and he didn’t prance about with that ridiculous metallic shade in his fur as he felt the art of building a body was to be much more revered than his muscular form. He came to the Jungle because he was ready to give himself over to the nature of bodybuilding with only pride in his work ethics instead of narcism in his shape.

When he walked into the gym, he half expected there to be an altar for for such a sacrifice of self, yet instead he found a very different image. Echo was caught rather off-guard to find that the entire gym was covered in mirrors. From the reception area in which he stood to the very back, every square inch of the walls, ceiling, and floor reflected whatever stood near it. It was jarring to see and hurt Echos eyes to observe. In the mirrors he stood as a repeating figure in an infinite number of reflected Jungles, each one of him seemingly more and more off-put than the last by his forced inclusion in the paradoxical pattern of an illusion. Echo also honestly couldn’t tell exactly how large the gym was or how many people were in it. If he believed his eyes, an army of miscellaneous, muscular studs were working out in a gym the size of several warehouses. It was all too much, and in the middle of it all, Echo felt hopelessly lost.

“Can I help you?”

Echo turned towards the sound. A youthful, fit-looking monkey wearing a smart suit and a smarter smile stood behind a mirror paneled desk. He was one of the many reflected throughout the entirety of the infinite gym, yet he seemed the most real to Echo. Echo stepped toward the desk, hesitant not to walk into any mirrors, and with a overwhelming sense of vertigo.

“I’m here to complete my registration,” Echo answered, hesitantly resting your elbows on mirrored surface as a set of elbows pushed up at his own. “I’m Echo?”


“One second,” the monkey cheerily prompted. Though Echo couldn’t see a computer screen from his side of the elevated desk, he heard the speedy typing of a keyboard and a few clicks of a mouse. After a few seconds the young monkey frowned. He looked confused to Echo, which made him rather nervous.

“I registered online,” Echo assured, more himself than the monkey, with his concern clear in his voice. “The money was transfered. I checked.”

“Oh,” the monkey’s smile returned in a snap as his face shot back up to Echo’s, “it’s not that, sir.”

“What is it then?” Echo asked, still a tad worried.

“Nothing.”

Echo was led further into the perplexing amalgamation of mirrors and vanity, from the reception area to the actual equipment floor, which proved to be entirely different from how he had pictured it being. In Echo’s eyes, this gym was meant to be a temple of athleticism and the principles of what a body could achieve through willpower. He grimaced as he passed a bull staring at himself in the mirror as he started a set of dumbbell curls. Echo was certainly interested in the bovine’s bulging, masculine physique as a gay bear, yet he couldn’t envy the bull’s decided sacrifice for tone over mass. He couldn’t condone the bull’s expression of undue pride as he fixated on his flexing biceps. He bull was arrogant to think that he’d bettered his body by seeking to look good instead of grow stronger, and Echo knew that the bull had to know that on some level. Otherwise Echo wouldn’t have seen the hint of need in the bull’s eyes that he’d seen in the eyes of so many other of his peers. Amidst all the of the bull’s vibrato and manufactured self-confidence, he still had an emptiness inside of him and needed more. The worst part was that the bull was a perfect template for the ethics of all the others working out that Echo saw as well. The bear may have been less toned than them all, but he was certainly the strongest.

“This way, Mr. Echo,” the young monkey said as he tugged at a small crevice to reveal a hidden door among one of the walls of mirrors. Echo dejectedly entered and found himself in a locker room. Every surface, from the lockers to the floor, was a brilliant white. Not a single mark or smudge was to be seen. The monkey led Echo through explaining how every member was provided a locker and a key for something he referred to as a “changing booth.”

“Changing booth?” Echo enquired.

“Shower,” the monkey rushed to correct himself, though Echo thought it was an odd slip of the tongue. “I’m sure Mr. Kipling will explain anything if you have any further questions, though I would recommend you keep them brief and ask them very politely.”

“Kipling? Who’s he?”

“The owner of the facility,” the monkey distractedly answered as he paused in front of a white steel door, hand hesitating near the ornate handle and slightly trembling. “He doesn’t come in often. He has ventures all over the globe, so when he does come, it’s usually for a very… distinct reason.”

The young primate touched the knob and then removed it. He was about to open it again, and then pulled it away again. He seemed utterly terrified of something and trying to work up the courage for a third attempt when he turned around. He had on that same receptionist’s smile he had on when Echo had first seen him behind the desk, but the cheery confidence in his eyes seemed more manufactured than that of the muscle-heads he’d just seen working out. There was a hint of something else in there, a flaw in the facade. It wasn’t need this time though. It was fear.

“He requested to see you when you arrived,” the monkey informed Echo. He seemed to forsake the notion of showing the bear through the door, instead backing away towards the entrance to the locker room. It seemed he was about to say something. His eyes bore a grave warning, yet before it could reach hi lips he quickly turned around and dashed from whence they came.

Echo was a tad startled by the young receptionist’s behavior at first but then shrugged it off. The kid had seemed a little high strung due to a lack of life experience to divinate what he should and shouldn’t be afraid of. Everyone’s a little fearful of their boss, but they’re really just people too, right? Echo rationalized that the kid was probably just intimidated because he worked for one of those high-rolling tycoon types that tended to throw their weight around a little more often than others. He was probably just as nice a man as any.

With that positive thought, Echo opened the door and stepped into the room, a stark difference from the prior one. There was no white in sight, and the lighting was quite dim as to cast a shadowy ambience. The floor was a dark, buffed, solid wood. High end exercise equipment filled the room that put the machine in the main gym to shame. A light clanking sound drew his eyes to one in particular on the far side of the room. In the dim light Echo couldn’t see much, but he could tell that a gorilla was utilizing one of the machines. He was faced away from Echo and wore an expensive track suit with golden embroidering. The figure lifted his hands from the lever he was previously lifting and snapped his fingers. The primate’s hand stretched back towards Echo before a deep, raspy voice reverberated throughout the room.

“Towel.”

Echo sighed as he picked up a towel folded neatly on a nearby bench. Echo was not pleased to have his optimism about Kipling being “just as nice a man as any” disproven so quickly, nor was he pleased to serve self-entitled sense of ego, but he knew from dealing with many primadona bodybuilders that it was probably the path of least resistance and therefore the most painless. He walked to the occupied machine, placing the towel into the outstretched hand. The gorilla brought it to his drenched forehead before discarding it aside. The white towel fell dejectedly and soiled to the dark floor.

“You are Echo?” the rumble asked.

"Yes,” Echo answered. His voice held a staunch, retaliatory confidence that suggested he didn’t like being pushed around and wasn’t to be trifled with. He unconsciously clenched his fists, his body preparing for confrontation as he did.

The gorilla rose, and Echo couldn’t help but to gasp. The ape was enormous. He stood at least one or two heads taller than Echo, who himself measured a respectable six feet tall. The bear found himself level with the mountainous gorilla’s impressively muscular chest. The track suit clung to the primate’s body, accentuating every nook and cranny of the gorilla’s respectably bulky body. He wasn’t built like the foolish gym bunnies in the main gym. Much like Echo, the gorilla’s form was clearly built purely for raw strength, yet unlike Echo, he had twice the mass of muscle the dwarfed bear possessed.

“You’re the well that’s been derailing my business,” the menacing ape growled down at Echo. He didn’t even bother bend his neck down to see the bear. Instead, he merely glanced down at him with only his eyes as if he were a child.

“That is to cease. Do I make myself clear?”

“No, you do not make yourself clear!” Echo growled with animalistic ferocity. “But it is clear that you think you have some right to intimidate me because of your size and money and expect me to fold.”

Echo puffed up his chest glaring into the intense eyes of the gorilla. He was quite pleased with the chance he spoke with, expecting it to extinguish his verbal adversary’s haughty air. Instead Echo was supposed to find that his feet were no longer touching the floor. While Exho’s fiery gaze was mixed on his, the gorilla had firmly taken the scruff of the bear’s neck in his grip. Echo found himself utterly flabbergasted to be hoisted into the air like a naughty cub. He kicked and squirmed like one too, but Echo quickly stopped when he found such struggles only resulted in a more painful grip on his neck. Echo was brought face to face with the scowling gorilla.

“So that’s how it’s to be,” Mr. Kipling rumbled.

Still hoisting the bulky bear at the considerably tall gorilla’s eye level, Kipling carried Echo to the room’s only exit as if he weighed no more than a bag of feathers.

“I had suspected you’d respond in this fashion. Welps like you rarely recognize how much of a naucance you can serve to be to real men like me when left undealt with. You think you are safe and see how everyone else is wrong from atop your tall ideals when you actually suffer from more delusion than anyone else. Welps like you don’t serve for the greater good in flaunting what you think. You only piss people like me off.”

Kipling tossed open the door with his unencumbered arm. Without even glancing at Echo, he tossed the bear a row of lockers like a flailing sack of garbage. Meanwhile, Echo found himself dizzy, dazed, and in severe pain from the tumble. His head was ringing, and he could only see white. He soon realized that wasn’t due to head injury, however. The white from where Echo had impacted the floor and lockers had dissipated. Now he was amidst a large cloud of white powder. It started to settle, clinging to his fur, when he thought he caught a whiff of baby powder. Before Echo had his wits about him enough to respond, he found himself once again aloft, this time in the gorilla’s arms.

“I hear about bleeding hearts like you trying to change things for the better,” Kipling continued, all the while setting Echo down to lay on a locker room bench as he rummaged through a nearby locker, “and I can’t help but wonder how long it will take you to make it here to my jungle I always offer the same ultimatum, and they always throw their principles in front of them like a shield. Every single one of them working out in the next room started exactly where you are now. ‘Performance over appearance’ before they’re covered head to toe in baby powder like you are now.”

Echo couldn’t quite understand what the gorilla was going on about. He was still in too much shock, too much pain, so he just laid there, paralyzed more out of crippling fear of the gigantic ape masquerading as indecision. Echo only stared as Kipling came back from the locker with his collected items, and in turn, Kipling’s piercing, critical gaze was fixed on him.

“You degenerate fools always see the flaws in others, yet you never see why they prefer their flaws over yours. It’s because, in the end, big men like me don’t want them to be stronger. Let them flex their perfectly toned air bags. They know that I’ll allow them to have their petty illusions, having learned pursuing anything else is childish. Pursuing anything else gets you here with me, welp.”

Without warning, Kipling laid hands on the bear again, yet Echo was so terrified that he didn’t dare move a muscle. Kipling whisked Echo’s meager gym clothes, first the old tank top and then the shorts. It wasn’t until the large gorilla hooked his thumb into the waistband of Echo’s boxers that bear resisted out of instinct, throwing his previously limp arms at the intrusive hand. That merely left the bear’s wrists clamped together in Kipling’s other painful grip. Echo whimpered from the pain and humiliation of the situation as his underwear was stripped off of his waist and legs in one deft tug. The bear laid exposed, his impressive physique and fear-shrunken cock well on display for the gorilla to see.

Kipling made no comment though. He didn’t so much as glance. It was as if it was below him. The act of humiliating another wasn’t. He was already doing that. Echo felt Kipling said nothing because he was beneath the gorilla’s standard to even grade. He was a problem to be dealt with and nothing more, which made Echo feel even worse. He wanted to die.

“If you’re going to be childish, you’ll be relegated to being one,” Kipling growled as he held up a bottle.

Echo was afraid but confused. His nervousness compelled him to speak.

“‘One’ what?” the subdued bear queried in a miniscule voice. The gorilla seemed to ignore him though, instead opting to read the bottle instead of answering his question. Echo felt like a chastised child.

“’Little Bear brand Talc Powder’,” Kipling rumbled with a condescending glance towards Echo. The bear shrunk into the bench, wishing he could disappear altogether. At least his question had been answered, though now he thoroughly wished it hadn’t.

With a swift jerk of the bottle, Kipling started to coat Echo with plume after plume of baby powder. As soon as the bear thought he had to stop, Kipling kept going. An impractical quantity of the talcum powder created an ant hill sized mound over his shrunken cock, quickly covering it in entirety. His diviting belly button was filled with white powder, and stray flecks flew as far as to reach his knees. Kipling only stopped when the bottle relinquished nothing more, and by then a photo of Echo’s crotch would’ve easily seen him mistaken as an infantile polar bear.

“There you are, welp,” Kipling grunted, carelessly tossing the empty bottle aside. “All powdered up and ready to join your friends as a proper gym trog. No more of your nonsense.”

The gorilla firmly gripped the bear’s jaw and jerked the averted, fearful face to come nose to nose with his. The previously flawless confidence that Kipling had seen in Echo’s eyes was now gone. His gaze now only conveyed one enormous fault, abject fear.

“Right, welp?” Kipling growled through barred teeth.

Echo nodded vigorously, trembling and terrified, willing to do anything to appease his assailant.

“Good,” Kipling grunted, releasing Echo’s jaw and wrist. Despite himself, Echo was pleased his willing procrastination had solicited approval from the gorilla, even if it was just through the lack of pain and fear. Even then, in the back of his mind, the bear began to associate pleasure with submission. What Echo didn’t was that Kipling had done this many times before, and that’s exactly what the gorilla wanted to happen.

“Now then,” Kipling continued, retrieving a crinkling, white object from where he had set it on the floor, “we need something to keep all that powder in place.”

________________


Some months later Kipling returned to the Jungle. He had ventures all over the world, yet he always enjoyed returning here. In a way, he saw the Jungle as his wine cellar, a collection of assets that started as worthless yet gained great value with age. All of the members had once been strong advocates for true strength a belief in the better good. Now they were his collection of sisyphean fools, and Kipling took great pleasure watching them endlessly struggle towards a meaningless goal in a prison of mirrors.

“Mr. Kipling, sir!” Ashton, the gym’s receptionist, stammered from behind his desk upon the sight of the gorilla. “What pleasant sup- honor it is to see you here… sir!”

Kipling merely glowered at him and the young monkey shrunk back behind his desk in fear. Ashton used to be a lightweight bodybuilding up and comer, yet he also used to decry competitions as vain and narcissistic. Kipling had taken great pleasure in ensuring his silence and subjugation by installing him as a receptionist. Kipling made his way to the desk and behind it to where Ashton cowered before cooping the boy up by his buttocks with one hand and raising him into the air. The monkey froze at the sudden elevation and knew what was coming next. Kipling proceeded to bounce the monkey by his padded rump, lightly tossing him into the air as if he was as light as a baseball, before catching him in the same hand. With every impact a cloud of powder flew up from the waist of Ashton’s khakis, sending the copious amount of powder he was forced to apply beneath his mandatory diaper to coat his previously spotless dress shirt. When he was finally set down, Ashton was mostly covered in white from the waist up with tears of shame in his eyes.

Kipling wandered away from the pathetic monkey, leaving him like discarded garbage, and inspected his present members of the gym. They all shied away from him, scared of the gorilla’s power of position, and Kipling like it this way. A jaguar cowered behind a punching bag. A bull dashed to the bathroom, a transparent excuse given that Kipling had seen to it that every member was terrified not to be diapered at the gym. If they didn’t they suffer the consequences.

Eventually Kipling came to a bear cowering in the corner of the gym, lifting dumbbells as a pretense. Almost all of Echo’s previously impressive muscle mass had disappeared, instead being replaced with minut, toned muscles instead. Echo glanced up at Kipling, fear always apparent in his eyes. It pleased Kipling greatly to see a childish welp put in his place, so without skipping a beat, the gorilla smacked the bear’s behind to send a plume of baby powder flying into the air. Kipling smiled for the first time in a long time at the blatant reminder.

There were no adults in the Jungle gym.